The present invention relates to grain drills used for planting grains, such as wheat and soybeans and, more particularly, to grain drills providing an accurate rate of metering of the planting of seed.
Numerous manufacturers sell grain drills which are utilized extensively throughout the world for planting grains, such as wheat, soybeans, oats, barley, etc. Grain drills are towed by tractors and plant wide swaths, such as 10 or more feet, with a single pass. The towing of the grain drill with a tractor provides the power for the metered planting of the seed into the furrows. Grain drills further may be either of the no till type, which do not require previous plowing and discing of the ground, or the till type, which require previously plowing and discing of the ground.
Commercially available grain drills are highly sophisticated machines which provide tremendous efficiency enabling farmers to plant large tracts of land with grain. A typical. soybean farmer may plant a thousand or more acres a year with a single grain drill. Thus, anything which adversely affects the operation of a grain drill has tremendous impact on the economics of farming using grain drills.
Commercially available grain drills do not contain on-board devices which permit the farmer to accurately determine the rate of planting of seed per acre in terms of weight per acre. A grain drill has an acreage counter which indicates approximately the number of acres which have been covered during planting. However, commercially available grain drills do not have on-board weighing devices which permit the weight of seed, such as wheat, soybeans, oats, barley, etc. to be accurately determined while planting is ongoing.
Seeds may be purchased in bags having a uniform weight, such as 50 lbs., which permits the farmer to load the hopper of a grain drill with an accurately weighed amount of seed which ultimately permits the farmer to determine the rate of planting of seed in weight per acre by dividing the total number of acres which have been planted during the time that the seed was planted by the number of preweighed bags used to fill the grain drill seed hopper times the weight of seed per bag. The filling of the hopper with preweighed bags of seed is cumbersome, requires the opening of individual bags involving substantial time, and prevents the farmer from purchasing seed in bulk. Seed purchased in bulk is cheaper which would result in a net savings of the cost per acre for planting if the farmer could accurately determine the weight of the bulk seed which would permit the foregoing calculation of pounds of seed per acre to be made to enable the farmer to determine the actual rate of planting in terms of weight per acre. However, the purchase of seed in bulk does not provide the farmer with an accurate determination of the weight of seed which is placed in the hopper. Therefore, after the filling of a grain drill hopper with seed from a bulk source is completed, while the farmer can determine approximately the total number of acres which were planted from the acre counter, there is no accurate measure of the weight of the seed which was placed in the hopper from a bulk purchase or container.
Thus, farmers today who use state of the art grain drills are faced with a constant dilemma of how to accurately determine the rate of planting of seed in terms of weight per acre to accurately control the rate of planting which permits optimization of crop yield. That dilemma either requires the purchase of seed in preweighed bags with its attendant inefficiencies and additional expense or makes it impossible for the farmer to calculate the weight rate of planting of seed in an accurate manner which results typically in not planting the grain seed at the ideal weight rate per acre which is necessary to optimize yield.
Furthermore, even if the farmer knows precisely the weight of seed which is placed in the hopper of a grain drill, there is no current mechanism for xe2x80x9con the flyxe2x80x9d determination of the rate of planting of seed in pounds per acre as the drill is operated before the seed hopper is emptied. Commercially available grain drills have a mechanical calibrated metering device which has a linear scale having increasing numbers which represent an increased rate of planting. However, because of the variation of the size of seed which is planted and the different types of seeds which are planted with a grain drill, the numerically graduated scale for controlling the rate of planting provides nothing about the weight rate of seed being planted and provides information on only a relative rate of planting.
Experienced farmers develop an understanding of the desired rate of planting of seed in terms of weight measure per acre. If the farmer accurately plants seed with a grain drill at the optimum rate, the yield of the resultant crop is optimized and further, the overall cost of seed to obtain the maximum crop yield is reduced. On one hand, if less than the optimum quantity of seed per acre is planted, the resultant yield will be less than the optimum yield resulting in the farmer realizing less income per acre than would be realized if the optimum rate of seed was planted per acre. On the other hand, if the rate of planting of seed is too great per acre, a decreased yield is realized, which is less than the optimum yield, resulting in the waste of seed which represents a substantial expense to the farmer. Also, the resultant plants may be down because of their high density, which makes it difficult for the farmer to combine the plants at harvest. For example, if a farmer is planting 1,000 acres of soybeans with a grain drill and makes a mistake of overestimating the rate of planting of seeds at a rate of 5 lbs. per acre, a total of 5,000 lbs. of wasted seed occurs which represents a substantial expense over $1,000.00 with no return on investment and a possible lessened yield because of over density in planting.
Additionally, with current state of the art grain drills, while the rate of deposition of seed may be varied by changing the setting of the control of the relative rate of planting of seed, there is no way for the farmer on the fly to determine the actual rate of planting of seed by planting only a small area. As previously described, the only way to precisely determine the weight rate of planting seed is to accurately count the number of preweighed bags of seed which are placed in the hopper and after the entire hopper is planted, the total weight of seed in the hopper is computed by multiplying the number of bags used by the weight of seed per bag and that total weight is divided by the number of planted acres. This process is time consuming and wasteful because if the rate of planting of seed is set either too high or too low, all of the land which was planted with the seed from the full hopper is not optimally planted at the right rate to maximize the yield and to reduce the expense of seed to the minimum amount per acre.
Additionally, while commercially available grain drills may contain a sight glass for viewing if there is seed in the drill, such viewing devices do not provide a view when the drill is close to being empty. This forces the farmer into the situation that it is possible for the hopper to be empty while the farmer is continuing to plant seed. The resultant acreage must be reseeded or worse, may not be seeded at all until after the seed germinates. In any event, because of the pressures that are involved with weather conditions to plant seed with a grain drill at the right time, the farmer requires the ability to know precisely when additional seed must be added to the hopper which may necessitate a helper to go to a seed supplier to obtain seed at the end of the day after the seed supplier is closed. If the farmer cannot accurately determine what the weight of seed is in the hopper at all times, it may be impossible to determine with enough lead time that additional seed must be purchased from the seed supplier or otherwise obtained from the farmer""s storage of seed.
Thus, while it is highly desirable for a farmer to know the weight rate of planting of seed per acre and further the quantity of seed in the hopper of a grain drill at all times, none of the currently commercially available grain drills permit an accurate determination on the fly of the amount of seed present in the hopper and furthermore, do not permit the calculation of the weight rate of planting of seed over a small number of acres less than the number of acres required to empty exhaust all of the preweighed seed which has been placed in the hopper. There is a long-felt need in farming to provide a low cost and accurate device for determining the weight rate of planting of seed per acre and further the weight of seed at all times in the hopper of a grain drill.
FIG. 1 schematically illustrates a Model 750 no till grain drill 10 manufactured by the John Deere Company. The grain drill 10 is comprised of a rigid frame 12 having a plurality of wheels 14 for supporting the drill during rolling over a surface of ground to be planted with grain and a grain hopper 16 for containing the grain to be planted in the ground. The aforementioned grain drill is sold to farmers and is exemplary of the state of the art of grain drills which do not have an on-board weighing mechanism for determining the weight of seed in the grain hopper 16.
The frame 12 has a pair of longitudinally extending frame members 18 which are hollow in rectangular hollow cross section and which are part of the rigid support of the grain drill. The frame 12 further has a plurality of cross frame members, not illustrated, which extend across the full width of the drill to form a rectangular space frame for supporting the weight of the seed hopper 16 across the width of the grain drill. While FIG. 1 illustrates a single seed hopper 16, it should be understood that wider grain drills have two seed hoppers bolted side by side to the frame, as illustrated in FIG. 3, which represents a John Deere Model 750 grain drill, such as, for example, permitting a 20-foot grain drill to be formed from two 10-foot seed hoppers which are individually used on 10-foot grain drills. The plurality of cross members are connected to the longitudinally extending frame members 18 to define the overall rigid space frame structure from which the plurality of wheels 14 are suspended. Each hopper 16 is bolted to the longitudinally extending members 18 at four corners thereof. The entire frame structure of the grain drills of FIGS. 1 and 3 is conventional and well known.
FIG. 2 illustrates an enlarged section of the longitudinal side of the grain drill 10 of FIG. 1. As illustrated, the outboard portion of the longitudinally extending frame member 18 is removed by removing bolts (not illustrated) to permit access from underneath in opening 19 to the horizontally extending member 22 as illustrated. In the Model 750 and other commercially available grain drills from John Deere, a total of eight holes 24 are drilled through the horizontal member 22 and face the bottom horizontal surface 26 of hopper 16. Pairs of the holes 24 face the four bottom corners of hopper 16. Eight tapped holes 28 extend through the bottom horizontal surface 26 and are in alignment with the holes 24 to permit the rigid attachment of the hopper 16 to the frame 12 by threading fasteners 30 through the hole 24 into engagement with the threads of a corresponding hole 28 as illustrated. The use of fasteners 30 in the prealigned holes 24 and 28 permits the farmer to readily remove the hopper if service is required or otherwise removal is necessary and further simplifies the manufacturing process. The fasteners 30 provide an extremely strong and rigid connection so that the hopper 16 does not shift relative to the frame 12 and further applies the weight of the grain in the hopper to the frame 12 when loaded and rolling across the surface of the ground during planting in the conventional manner.
As illustrated, the opening 19 on the outboard side of the horizontally extending frame members 18 provides access to secure the fasteners 30 from underneath to the holes 24 and 28 at the manufacturing facility and thereafter to permit the farmer to have access if necessary to either tighten the fasteners or to remove them if the hopper 16 is to be removed from the frame 12.
The grain drill 10 contains a conventional acreage counter 32 which provides a running count of the number of acres planted and consists of a rotary set of wheels similar to that of a speedometer which are calibrated to read the actual number of acres which are planted and a control 34 for setting the rate of planting of seeds. The control 34 has a series of teeth which interlock with a movable handle which is rotated relative to a graduated numerically calibrated scale for setting the rate of planting. The rate of planting is calibrated such that higher numbers indicate a higher rate of planting but not in terms of a calibrated seed weight rate per acre. However, it should be understood that while the acreage counter is reasonably accurate in practice, there is no available mechanism to calibrate the weight per acre of seeds which are being planted purely by use of the control 34 with the only effective mechanism being to distribute preweighed seeds and divide the weight by the number of acres planted as described above.
FIG. 3 illustrates a prior art grain drill 11 which is generically in accordance with FIG. 1, except that two seed hoppers 16 are mounted side by side. Grain drills 11 for planting wide swaths include multiple hoppers 16, such as two side by side hoppers as illustrated. The frame 12 is wider than the prior art of FIG. 1 to support the increased weight, but overall the function of the grain drill 11 is the same as the prior art grain drill 10 of FIG. 1 and also has the same deficiencies as described above of not providing the farmer with the ability to determine the weight of seed in the hopper and the weight rate of planting of seed on the fly.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,449,915, 4,465,211, 4,539,921, 4,697,173, 5,595,131 and 5,323,721 disclose systems used for the planting of seeds. U.S. Pat. No. 4,465,211 discloses a weight indicator for a seeder but such device has no application to grain drills because of its construction. U.S. Pat. No. 2,449,915 discloses an indicator for indicating the level of seed in a seed hopper but does not disclose any weighing mechanism. U.S. Pat. No. 4,539,921 discloses a modular drill frame construction. U.S. Pat. No. 4,697,173 discloses a monitoring apparatus which monitors various parameters of agricultural seeding, including the level of seeds stored in a hopper of a seeder and a sensor for providing a measure of the rate of movement of the seeder over the ground. U.S. Pat. No. 5,959,131 discloses a flexible and resilient support for a grain box of a grain drill. U.S. Pat. No. 5,323,721 discloses a planter monitoring system which determines a number of parameters of planting. None of the aforementioned patents discloses a mechanism which may be used to accurately weigh the seed within a hopper of a grain drill and to provide the farmer with an accurate measure of the weight rate of seeds being planted.
The present invention is an improved grain drill which senses the weight of seed grain in a hopper which contains the seed to be planted and further, a method for modifying a grain drill having a frame including a plurality of wheels for supporting the grain drill during rolling over a surface of ground to be planted with grain and a hopper joined to the frame for containing the seed grain to be planted to sense the weight of seed grain in the hopper. In accordance with the invention, a support is joined to opposed sides of the frame and to spaced apart locations of the hopper to transfer weight of the hopper to the frame and includes at least one weight sensing device which senses the weight of seed grain in the hopper transferred through the support to the frame. The at least one weight sensing device provides an output of the sensed weight of the seed grain in the hopper which is coupled to a display for displaying the weight of the seed grain contained in the hopper so as to provide the operator of a tractor towing the grain drill with an accurate indication of the weight of seed grain contained in the hopper at all times.
The present invention provides substantial advantages to operators of grain drills in comparison to the prior art described above. By providing the operator of a grain drill with an accurate weight of the seed in the hopper at all times, including during planting operations, several operational advantages are realized. First, the control for setting the rate of planting may be readily accurately calibrated for diverse types and different sizes of seed grains in terms of weight per acre being planted after the planting of a few acres to fine tune the rate of planting to a desired weight rate of grain seed per acre. The calibration is simply achieved by the operator determining the weight of the seed grain, which is planted over a small number of acres which are indicated to have been planted by the acreage counter, to calculate the weight rate of seed grain planted per acre by simply dividing the total weight of seed grain planted by the number of acres planted. If the initial setting of the control controlling the rate of planting in the prior art is either too high or too low, the control is then moved in the opposite sense to adjust the rate of planting of seed grain to the desired planting rate of weight per acre which the farmer wishes to achieve during planting. The precise calibration of the rate of planting of seed grain in terms of weight per acre can be achieved after an initial calibration and possibly one more calibrations after resetting of the control controlling the relative rate of planting to achieve the desired rate of planting in terms of weight per acre which provides the farmer with a substantial cost savings because, as explained above, planting seed grain at the optimum rate provides the greatest crop yield at the smallest possible seed grain cost per acre thereby maximizing the farmer""s economic yield per acre. Additionally, the invention by providing the farmer with a continuous display of the weight of seed grain in the seed grain hopper, enables the farmer to make arrangements for the acquiring of additional seed grain to refill the hopper prior to running out of seed grain which, in the prior art, often resulted in a substantial loss of time to the farmer because the farmer was required to determine how much area was not planted because the hopper had run out of seed grain. Furthermore, the continuous display of the weight of seed grain in the hopper permits the farmer to exhaust one type of seed grain in the hopper and change over to another type of seed grain without substantial mixing of the two seed grain types. It is highly desirable for farmers to use different types of seed grains for planting a crop to provide a hedge against a bad yield for one seed grain type by providing another seed grain type during the same planting which will provide a higher yield in different weather conditions which would not produce a high yield for the first seed grain type. Finally, as explained above, the farmer may purchase seed grain in bulk quantities which is cheaper than buying it in preweighed bags to thereby lessen the cost of seed grain per acre in planting and lessen the time and effort required to load the hopper of the grain drill by permitting use of powered conveyers or other types of seed grain transporting devices which supply seed: grain from bulk containers which eliminates the hand labor and low efficiency of opening individual seed grain bags.
When the present invention is used to retrofit an existing grain drill, such as a drill from the John Deere Company, as illustrated in the prior art of FIGS. 1-3, only minor modifications are required to the existing unit because the fitting of a support, which transfers weight of the seed grain in the hopper to the frame, is retrofitted to use the same holes which are used to attach the frame to the hopper with fasteners as described above at the time of manufacturing or, alternatively, requires simple additional attachments of the support to the hopper and the frame.
The purchase cost of the present invention from a farm equipment supplier may be recovered by a farmer in a single year by permitting the farmer to accurately calibrate the weight of planting of seed grain which saves wasted seed grain and lowered yield from over planting and reduced yield from under planting.
Furthermore, while a preferred embodiment of the present invention locates the support for transferring the weight from the hopper through a weight sensing device in the support directly underneath the hopper and within the longitudinally extending frame members on both sides of the drill, it should be understood that the present invention may be alternatively practiced with a support transferring the weight from the hopper outboard of the longitudinally extending frame members through a weight sensing device to the frame at a point of attachment on an outside surface of the longitudinally extending frame member so as to permit any design of grain drill, including those without any accessible opening underneath the frame 12, as described in conjunction with the prior art of FIG. 2, to be utilized with the practice of the present invention.
The present invention utilizes weight sensing devices which preferably are commercially purchased load cells which are configured into the support to transfer the weight of the hopper to the frame for producing an output signal which is displayed from a commercially available display unit which decodes the individual weights sensed by each load cell and converts the individual weights sensed by each load cell into a cumulative total weight display of the seed grain contents of the hopper. Each of outputs from the individual weight sensing devices located in the support are electrically connected to the display with individual electrical cables which provides the aforementioned display of the total weight sensed by each of the weight sensing devices. Preferably, at least four weight sensing devices are utilized with the present invention. In applications of the invention where two or more hoppers are used in a side by side configuration, such as FIG. 3, an odd number of weight sensors may be used per hopper when a common support for two frames being utilized inboard of the sides of the grain drill.
The present invention is a grain drill comprising a frame having a plurality of wheels for supporting the grain drill during rolling over a surface of ground to be planted with grain; a hopper for containing the grain to be planted in the ground; a support which is joined to opposed sides of the frame and to spaced apart locations of the hopper to transfer weight of the hopper to the frame, the support including at least one weight sensing device which senses a weight of seed grain in the hopper transferred through the support to the frame and provides an output of the sensed weight of the seed grain in the hopper; and a display, coupled to the output, for displaying the weight of seed grain contained in the hopper. The support comprises a pair of weight bearing supports which are respectively joined to opposed sides of the frame, each weight bearing support including first and second vertical parts which are respectively attached to the hopper at the spaced apart locations separated along a longitudinal dimension of the grain drill and a horizontal part joined to the vertical parts and attached to the frame. The at least one weight sensing device comprises first and second load cells associated with each of the pair of weight bearing supports, the first load cell being loaded with weight transferred from the first vertical part to the horizontal part and the second load cell being loaded with weight transferred from the second vertical part to the horizontal part. A first end of the first and second vertical parts is attached to the hopper and a second end of the first and second vertical parts is respectively attached to spaced apart positions of the horizontal part to transfer the weight of the seed grain in the hopper to the horizontal part; and the horizontal part has first and second horizontal extensions, the first horizontal extension having a first end which is coupled to the frame and includes the first load cell and the second end which is deflected downward by the weight of the seed grain in the hopper and which is attached to the second end of the first vertical part and the second horizontal extension having a first end which is attached to the frame and includes the second load cell and the second end which is deflected downward by the weight of the seed grain in the hopper and which is attached to the second end of the second vertical part. The support frame includes at each of the opposed sides a horizontal member, each horizontal member having at least first and second spaced apart holes extending vertically through the horizontal member and which respectively receive and allow vertical movement of a portion of the first and second vertical parts, the holes restricting horizontal movement of a hopper relative to the frame by confining the portion of the first and second vertical parts to within the holes. The first and second vertical parts comprise a horizontal piece attached to one end of a vertical piece and another end of the vertical piece being the second end of the vertical part, at least one connector extending from the horizontal piece through one of the holes and being vertically moveable therein and into engagement with the hopper. At least a pair of connectors extend from the horizontal piece at opposed ends thereof spaced from a point of attachment of the vertical piece to the horizontal piece. Each connector is threaded and engages threads in the hopper at one of the spaced apart positions of the hopper. A bushing, is located in each hole and securely engages each connector to prevent horizontal movement of the connector relative to the bushing. The spaced apart positions are located at four corners of the hopper and the support is attached to the four corners by engagement with a bottom part of the hopper.
Each weight bearing support does not to extend beyond a width of a portion of the frame to which the weight bearing support is attached or, alternatively, at least one of the weight bearing supports is mounted at least in part extending beyond a width of a portion of the frame to which the weight bearing support is attached.
A method for modifying a grain drill having a frame having a plurality of wheels for supporting the grain drill during rolling over a surface of ground to be planted with seed grain and a hopper joined to the frame for containing the seed grain to be planted comprises raising the hopper upward from the frame to separate the hopper from being joined to the frame; positioning a support between the hopper and the frame to join the support to opposed sides of the frame and to spaced apart locations of the hopper to support the hopper in a raised position above the frame, the positioned support transferring weight of the hopper to the frame, including at least one weight sensing device which senses a weight of the seed grain in the hopper transferred through the support to the frame and which provides an output of the sensed weight of the seed grain in the hopper; and providing a display for displaying on the grain drill the weight of the seed grain contained in the hopper. The construction of the support utilized with the foregoing method is preferably as described above.